Bonhoeffer's New Wine

I need to say more about Nashville, and what happened when I rubbed shoulders in a great cloud of witnesses whose love reminded me who God calls me to be. We become who we are created to be only in companionship with others who push us, hold us and release us in the dynamic kind of interpretive, improvisational dance of our lives. And I don't much care if that dancing metaphor sounds overly dramatic - human life is dramatic and miraculous, even as it can also be mundane and heartbreaking.

One of the speakers at Nashville invited us to take another look at Bonhoeffer's "Life Together". As I began to read this fascinating journal of a triumphant community of resistance to the monstrous hatred of Hitler's Germany, I was struck first by Bonhoeffer's invitation to recognize my own community of faith - the people who gather as Skyline - for the miracle God has created us to be for each other and for our neighbors.

Bonhoeffer writes that the kind of gratefulness a prisoner feels for a visitor who brings encouragement into darkness can multiply a thousand times over when we are surrounded by pilgrims on the journey of faith. But we often take each other for granted, of course, precisely because we are surrounded by an embarrassment of riches.

I remembered the way I used to feel so isolated as a Christ-follower and officer aboard USS Bunker Hill, in the vastness of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. When I would gather with a few others to pray or to read the scriptures together, I would often feel as if we were the last Christians on the face of the earth. I missed the hymns and the liturgy and the fellowship of the congregations of Christians God had surrounded me with in my youth. A Chaplain visited us when we got in helicopter range of the aircraft carrier in our Battle Group, and I wept as I received communion.

Jesus knew far more about wine than I do.

But when he spoke of the new wine of God's realm, he decanted an overflowing cup from his experience of wine to demonstrate something about those who dared to believe in his message of God in the midst of our life together. The frothy, fermenting "fruit of the gods" that refused to be contained reminded Jesus of those who left behind everything to follow him - those who would go where they did not wish to go after he released them to invite the world to celebrate God's love in a community called the Kingdom of God.

Our capacity to refresh others who are thirsty for love staggers our imagination. If we could but have a taste of what it is like to bring another (a stranger? a friend? a sibling?) to life, we would gladly accept Jesus' grace-filled invitation to pour us out for the sake of God's love for our hurting and lonely world. Our worship is a never-ending party - a celebration of the new wine, the very best wine of God's love, flowing without measure. It pours into the streets that stream from where we gather to return and search out the parched and dry.

New wineskins deliver the wine of gladness and reception into improbable but amazing grace. They do not contain it; there is no time or need to patch old containers, weary from holding it in. This wine is restless for the celebration - to be consumed and to consummate the marriage of God to the whole human community - indeed, to all of creation.

I drank this new wine to the dregs among pilgrims gathered in Nashville who gave their lives to minister in the name and power of Jesus to all people. This wine also flowed through my life into others, and I found that being poured out makes room for the never-ending stream of God's grace and love for the world. And I know that what draws me back to the saints gathered at Skyline is the reckless way we welcome the Messiah to recommend the vintage of our love to any and all who dare to believe in a world redefined by the love of God in all people.

Pour it on, God!